Tailgates & Tanlines

Luke Bryan is a one-man auto industry bailout. Scantily clad women dance on his truck (or sometimes tractor) on the peppy smash hit "Country Girl (Shake It for Me)"; later, a truck is Bryan's means of escape in a surprisingly bluesy, growly mini-suite of brooding jams kicked off by "Muckalee Creek." It's pop country with muscle and, as befits a third album, expanded range, sexy but wholesome, adult but almost childlike: "Tangle me up like Grandma's yarn," he tells the shaking ladies. The lovelorn "I Know You're Gonna Be There" is legitimately sad, but he'll always have his four-wheeler.